Just Routine
by Seriadne
Summary: She would come talk to Elsa's door every single day even though she knew she would get no response. But one night, something seemed different. Elsanna oneshot, based on a prompt by djfeel on tumblr.


H...hey...*cowers because this is the first time in forever I've posted something on here*

So, completely new fandom that I've been obsessing over. Frozen is taking over my life. People are actually starting to call me Elsa. (I spend too much time alone in my roooooooooooooooooom.)

This was a prompt from djfeel on tumblr (go check her out, djfeel. tumblr. com) that I decided I - among like three other people - had to write. Hopefully it will be to her liking! I haven't written publishable fanfics in a while, so this is kind of an experiment to get me back into the swing of things. Maybe it'll actually encourage me to be active on FF once again, who knows?

Disclaimer: Don't own Frozen. Do I even have to say it?

Rated T for dark themes and just a teensy tiny bit of royal lesbian incest. *tosses incest guilt over shoulder* Don't like, don't read.

* * *

It was the same routine every day.

"Elsa?"

_Every._

"I know you're in there."

_Single._

"Won't you come out?"

_Day._

"Please...please don't ignore me."

Anna was changing, and even through the door Elsa noticed it.

She noticed her sister's voice getting deeper, her pronunciations becoming more eloquent, and her schemes for getting Elsa to open the door gaining in cleverness each time.

But it wasn't all with age.

She noticed how, over the years, Anna's signature knock changed from her customary _tap-tap-ta-tap-tap_ to a simple trio of knocks, losing more vigor and life every time.

She noticed how Anna's voice lowered in volume each time she came by, like she knew that she was essentially talking to a door and there was no point in yelling to make herself heard.

She noticed how, after a certain point in Anna's early teens, the door-opening schemes ceased entirely.

She noticed Anna's tone becoming more and more sedate, moving from cajoling to pleading and finally to resignation.

But despite the changes, she would still come to the door every day - sometimes for just a minute, sometimes for well over an hour. Sometimes she just knocked and didn't say anything, pretending that she had left. But Elsa always knew when she was still there, perhaps because she could hear her sister's breathing from her position leaning against her door. They often remained in mutual silence like that: Elsa wishing desperately that Anna would talk to her but not being able to voice it, and Anna not heeding her sister's silent plea because she was convinced that no one was listening to her.

And it broke Elsa's heart anew every day.

More than once, she caught herself with her hand on the doorknob, ready to fling open the door and throw her arms around her little sister for the first time in forever.

_But I can't._

Every time she so much as thought about opening her door, she pulled the hems of her gloves even farther down on her wrists, scowling at them like they were the spawn of Satan himself. For her, they might as well have been.

_I have to stay in here. I can't..._

She relived that day in the ballroom more than she cared to admit to her parents, relived it in frighteningly realistic flashbacks and nightmares that always left her trembling in her bed with the sheer willpower it took not to cry.

_I can't hurt her again._

Quite frequently, she found her gaze drawn to a small picture that she kept atop her dresser, one of she and Anna when they were small children. She had taken up painting in the years she had spent in her room, and that little framed image was the one that held the most special place in her heart. After a few years, it had become habit for her to take it and sleep with it clutched against her chest on nights when she felt particularly desperate for human contact.

After their parents died, she began to sleep with it every night.

_I love you, Anna. You're all I have left to love in this world._

_ I wish I could open this door and tell you._

Yes, it was the same routine every day.

Until the day when it wasn't.

* * *

_Tap tap tap._

"Elsa?"

Elsa perked up slightly from her bed, instinctively closing her fingers tighter around the small gilded frame of the painting.

_Anna? At this hour?_

"I...I hope I didn't wake you..."

She hadn't. Elsa hadn't fallen asleep once that night, but of course she didn't say that. She didn't dare even acknowledge that she heard her sister's voice, alarmingly pitiful as it was.

"The sky's awake."

_I know_, Elsa wanted to say. She had been staring at it for quite a while, the colorful aurora borealis sparkling against the night sky. _It's beautiful._

"I was hoping that...maybe we could go..." A heavy sigh pushed its way through the door, and the words that came after were mumbled and slurred. "Course we can't."

As quietly as she could, Elsa slipped out of bed and padded barefoot across the carpeted floor to her bedroom door, hoping that Anna wouldn't stop talking while she was en route.

"I might still go alone, though, if you're interested." Her voice was much clearer to Elsa now that she had taken up her customary post by the door. "Up on the roof like we did when we were younger...just sitting there and staring at the colors. It's a bit breezy though, might be a little cold, but I don't know if that would bother you any...I mean if it's not super cold, then it doesn't bother me. I kinda like it, actually, wind...it's like a friend who hugs you and doesn't want to let go. I like hugs. They don't even have to be warm, so long as they're hugs, and I just..."

Elsa shook her head, a bitter smile tugging at the corners of her pale lips, as Anna trailed off with another sigh. Even as sad as she sounded, her little sister always managed to babble.

"I...I miss that, Elsa. I know it hasn't happened since we were kids, but I still miss it."

The bitter smile disappeared in an instant. Anna sounded legitimately heartbroken, and it killed Elsa to have to pretend like she wasn't even listening. A sixteen year-old shouldn't have that much pent-up despair.

"I miss..." Anna took a shaky breath. "I miss you."

Elsa could feel her eyes burning, a strange sensation paired with the suddenly chilly atmosphere in the room, and she furiously scrubbed at them with the heel of her hand. She could already see tiny snowflakes beginning to fall from the ceiling.

_Conceal. Don't feel._

_ It's for her._

Strangely enough, that didn't seem completely true to Elsa anymore.

"Elsa, I...I wish you would have come out once. Just to say hi, even. I wish I had some way of knowing that you were listening to me, so I could...so I could say sorry and know that you heard me."

_Sorry? What for?_

"I just..." Anna's voice cracked noticeably, and there was a brief pause before she started talking again in the same shaky voice as before. "I want to know why you shut yourself away from me..." Elsa heard a tiny sniffle and a muffled thump at about head height which, she assumed, was Anna letting her forehead fall against the door. She had done it before. "...what I did to hurt you so much that you refused to talk to me like this...because I wanted to make it better. I really did."

Elsa noticed that Anna was speaking of herself in the past, but she signed it off to being lost in bad memories. Heaven knew both sisters spent enough time locked in the past. Besides, she was focused on other things.

_She thinks that it's her fault?_

"I never wanted to do anything to hurt you, Elsa." She could tell that Anna was crying freely now, her breath hitching and her words punctuated by shaky inhales. "I'm sorry for whatever it was. I just need you to know that...that I love you...I don't know how I still do...I've barely seen you in years, barely even talked to you, so I don't know how...but I do." A trembling sigh. "Please at least tell me if you can hear me say that."

Elsa didn't even register reaching for the doorknob until her hand brushed the cool surface. Spiderwebs of frost spread across the brass from her fingertips, and she jerked her hand away as if something had tried to bite her.

_I can hear you,_ she thought despondently. _I love you too._

"I...you probably wouldn't understand...I don't even understand...but...I have to say it at least once." Was that suppressed sobbing now? "I love you, Elsa...so much...I shouldn't feel this way...you're my _sister,_ for heaven's sake..."

Elsa's heart lurched with the realization of just what her sister was talking about.

"I had to tell you. Just once." Anna swallowed. "I'm sorry..."

Her pale fingertips rested against the door where she thought Anna's forehead was, but the frost that appeared there didn't spread as quickly.

_Anna,_ she mouthed, a tear finally welling over and slipping down her cheek.

A final shaky sigh sounded from the other side of the door. "The sky's awake, Elsa, but I guess you're not." A pregnant pause. "It's late. Maybe I shouldn't be, either."

_No,_ Elsa begged silently, wishing that it would be safe to open her door for once, wishing that her sister remembered her powers so the snowy room beyond would come as not surprise. _No, stay. Talk to me. Help me remember how it used to be._

Had she been speaking aloud, her crying would have been just as evident as Anna's.

"Good night," Anna mumbled, and then in an even tinier voice, "Bye."

Then nothing.

Elsa listened for almost half an hour after that, but she didn't hear her sister's soft breathing.

She was gone. Again.

* * *

"_Anna_!"

The scream, muffled though it was caused Elsa to jolt awake and, consequently, smack the back of her head against her door.

"Ow..." she muttered, looking about blearily as she rubbed the crown of her head. Waking up to a sight that wasn't the ceiling above her bed caught her off guard, and the impending headache didn't do much to help either.

_Must've fallen asleep..._ she thought ruefully, glancing about the room from her position sitting and leaning against her door. _What wok-_

"Someone go get Gerda! A doctor! Anybody!"

It took a moment for it to click in Elsa's drowsy mind, but as soon as it did she was wide awake.

_Anna._

Ugly dread and terror coiled in the pit of her stomach as she bolted upright, reeling slightly from the brief spell of lightheadedness. She didn't waste a moment on second-guessing herself as she fumbled for the door handle, all thoughts on concealing forgotten. The temperature around her dropped by at least twenty degrees within seconds. Cold gusts of air whipped about the room, stirring up the residual snowflakes from the previous night, but she didn't bother to close the door behind her to hide her miniature frozen hell. Had she been thinking logically, she would have reasoned that the servants all knew more or less why she was hidden away in her room, and the only person that didn't know was Anna.

But she wasn't thinking logically. Her brain was only firing on one cylinder, and that cylinder had Anna's name engraved on the side. Every bone in her body screamed for her to reach Anna's room quickly, as quickly as she possibly could. Ice crystals sprang from the floor wherever her bare feet touched, and the freezing gales followed her as she sprinted down the corridor as fast as she could, blowing the velvet curtains asunder. One could say that she looked nigh on deranged, bolting through the corridors in only her nightgown. That is, if anyone had been in a state of mind focused enough to comment on such things.

As soon as Elsa rounded the corner, she saw the three pale-faced servants clustered outside Anna's open door, shaking and crying wordlessly, which only served to harshen the temperature drop. If the faint footsteps were anything to judge by, more people were coming.

"P-Princess Elsa," blubbered one of the servants, a middle-aged lady whose eyes looked far too young and fearful to belong on her face. "W-what are you d-doing out?"

Elsa didn't so much as spare her a glance. She ignored each of them as they waved their trembling hands at her, trying to ward her off and direct her away from Anna's room. She ignored their pleas for her to stay back, to not come any closer, because there were some things that young women just should not see. Had they not jumped out of her path, she might well have plowed them down.

Once she reached the doorway, she stopped dead, and everything within her seemed to grind to a halt.

Nothing in the room was wrecked. Nothing had frozen, nothing had caught fire. It didn't look like anything valuable had been stolen. It looked completely normal - save for the small detail that her little sister was lying on the floor with a knotted bedsheet around her neck.

_No_.

As soon as she remembered how to move her legs, she was inside, paying no heed to the knife-wielding servant that had presumably cut Anna down. She fell to her knees, hands hovering just above the younger princess's unmoving form as if scared that she would freeze her solid should they touch.

"Anna..." she whispered brokenly, the word riding on the ghost of a breath.

_No. She can't have. She wouldn't have._

Elsa's slender fingers finally made contact, tentatively brushing along Anna's bloodless cheeks and tracing the outline of her blue-tinged lips. She dared not look at her eyes, because if she didn't see the sapphire orbs staring sightlessly at the ceiling then she could delude herself into thinking that Anna was just sleeping. Merely unconscious.

_Unconscious._

Because she couldn't bear to even think the word _dead_.

She vaguely registered the ice creeping out from beneath her knees, covering the carpet in a thin layer of transparency and driving the servant beside her out into the hall with the others, but she didn't care.

"Anna..." she repeated shakily, feeling tears well up in her eyes once again. Her hand cupped the side of her sister's face, her thumb stroking jerkily back and forth as if to rouse her. "No...no, no, _no..._"

Her gaze flicked briefly down to the rolled-up bed sheet encircling Anna's neck, and with a shuddering gasp of despair she fumbled the knot undone. As soon as it was loose, she flung it across the room as if it were toxic. Underneath, the skin on Anna's neck was marred by a ring of ugly purplish bruises.

"Anna..." The name wrenched its way from Elsa's throat for the third time, and the tears finally spilled over her lashes. "Please...no...don't leave me..."

The cold gusts picked up around them, carrying fat snowflakes and hailstones, circling the room almost like a cyclone. The servants recoiled, but only a fraction of the gale reached them in the hall. The real storm was only inside the room.

"I'm sorry," Elsa whimpered, all but oblivious to the building storm around her. She brushed her fingertips over the bruising, wishing that she could make it go away. Wishing that she could once again make Anna's freckles be the only thing breaking the flawless expanse of her skin. "Oh gods, Anna, I am so sorry..."

Then she finally broke down, pulling Anna's limp body into her lap and hugging it as close to her as she could.

_It. This is not her. This is not my sister. Not anymore._

Her forehead pressed against the forehead of what used to be her sister, fat tears worming their way out from under tightly closed lids and streaking down her face. The winds suddenly picked up tenfold, howling and tossing about shards of ice that miraculously - or not - all missed their creator.

_If I had spoken to her, maybe this wouldn't have happened._

"I love you," she sobbed, her words little more than incoherent gasps for air. "Anna, I love you so much...please just let me tell you...I am so sorry..."

_Just one word. I could have said one word to her._

"You have to wake up...I can't live without you...I can't live not hearing your voice..."

The blizzard seemed to scream at her in reply, almost mocking her as her tears splashed onto Anna's pale face. _You didn't kill her with ice like you feared, _it seemed to shriek, _but you still killed her!_

Elsa knew she could have saved Anna and had had countless opportunities to do so, and the thought alone was enough to rip a wildly anguished cry from her throat that sounded vaguely like her sister's name. It was nothing compared to what she was feeling inside.

Her eyes were closed, and she barely registered the raging storm surrounding her, so she naturally didn't notice it. Even the servants, watching in horror from the corridor, could barely make it out through the chaotic blurs of ice and snow. They could only see a white light, growing in size and intensity, with Elsa and Anna silhouetted ever so faintly within it.

"I love you..." Elsa was practically bawling now, repeating the same words over and over again as if the repetition could force Anna's body to respond. "I love you...I love you...I love you..."

With every repetition, with every tear that fell upon her face, the light grew more intense and the winds more aggressive They were at the point of tearing Anna's door off its hinges when-

Everything seemed to stop, because-

Elsa had to have imagined that-

_Did...did she move?_

Almost all at once, the light faded. The winds died down from their blizzard force to nothing at all, the snowflakes they carried falling and quickly melting along with the ice covering the carpet.

Suddenly, everything was unnaturally silent, especially compared to the uproar just seconds before.

Elsa dared to open her eyes, gaze flicking about the room and noting the lack of snow before she once again focused on the body of her little sister.

_The bruises...they're gone._

She blinked, making sure that the absence of bruising on Anna's throat wasn't just a result of the tears blocking her vision. It wasn't. She glanced up at her closed eyes-

_But weren't they open before?_

Hardly daring to hope, Elsa whispered, "Anna?"

Even as she watched, Anna's eyelids began to flicker, leaving Elsa helpless to anything but watch and try to suppress the roiling sea of emotions within her. She shifted slightly in Elsa's arms, a tiny moan escaping from between her barely parted lips.

"Anna," Elsa repeated shakily, moving a hand to squeeze Anna's. "Can...can you hear me?"

Finally, _finally,_ Anna's eyes flickered open. She glanced about for a few moments blearily, blinking the haze from her eyes, before she focused on the tear-stained face of her sister. A shadow of contentment crossed over her face, followed by confusion. She raised her free hand to her face, delicate fingers dragging at her cheeks with the same clumsiness that one would expect from a child who had just woken up.

"E...Elsa?" she breathed. Raspy though her voice was, it was still music to Elsa's ears.

Elsa couldn't help the choked laugh that escaped her throat, her face splitting into a smile of immense relief. Before she could stop herself, she buried her face in Anna's now-unblemished neck, practically shaking with sobs of joy.

"Thank heavens," she gasped, her lips brushing against Anna's rapidly-warming skin. "I thought..."

"Elsa," Anna repeated, surer of herself this time. "But...but how...I should be..."

"No, you shouldn't," Elsa immediately returned, forcing her voice to sound firm as she pulled back to meet her sister's eyes. "Don't you ever _dare_...just..._never_ do that again."

Anna seemed completely confused as to why Elsa was the one cradling her, why Elsa was the one crying over her, why it wasn't one of the servants. "But-"

"No," Elsa repeated, and she pulled Anna up to her for a real hug. Hesitantly, the redhead's arms slid around her, and the sensation sent a thrill through her body. "I don't know how, and I won't question it. But I do know that you should not be dead." Her embrace tightened. "Gods, Anna, please never do that to me again..."

"I thought you wouldn't care." Anna's voice was muffled by Elsa's shoulder. "I thought that's why you avoided me."

"You're my sister, Anna." Elsa's voice was suddenly soft, her forced strength gone and replaced with wavering tones. "I love you no matter what. A door isn't enough to stop that."

A dry, weak laugh caused Anna's body to jerk, but she refused to lean back and look at Elsa. "That was part of the problem."

Elsa wasn't sure how to reply to that. Making sure that Anna's face was still buried in her shoulder, she sent a single gust of cold air to the door and closed it, the lock clicking smoothly into place. She had a feeling she knew where this was going, and she didn't want the servants hearing it. There would be plenty of time to reunite with them later.

"What was?" she asked slowly, hesitantly, though she was pretty sure she already knew the answer.

"You're my sister," was the quiet reply. "And I love you."

_Oh_. Now Elsa was sure of it. She flashed back to the one-sided conversation the previous night, shivering as she once again heard the despondency of Anna's voice.

"Anna-"

"You don't understand," she interrupted, finally pulling back. She still didn't look at Elsa, though, instead choosing to stare at a point just beyond her elbow. "I did it because I love you, Elsa...like, _love-_love."

"Anna-"

It was as if Elsa wasn't even speaking, because when Anna was forcing herself to say something _by the gods _was she forceful on herself. The strain and anxiety was evident in her tone. "I figured that doing this...in the end, it wouldn't be different from how I've been living these past years."

_Alone._ Anna didn't even need to say it. The word echoed in Elsa's mind like a swear, and she wanted nothing more than to shake it away.

"I did it because I love you, and I know you would never be able to love me back." Anna's shoulders hitched gently. "Not like I love you."

"Anna..." Elsa's chilled fingers came up to cup Anna's cheek, forcing the younger girl to look at her.

"I did it to become the wind," she whispered. "That way I could always wrap myself around you, and you would never be able to push me away."

"It's like a friend that hugs you and doesn't want to let go," Elsa murmured absently, glancing down for a brief second.

Anna blinked, silent for a moment while she connected the dots. "You...you heard me?"

"I always hear you." Her thumb began stroking Anna's cheek again, and she reveled in the signature rosiness that was returning to her freckled complexion. "I always listen. I'm always right on the other side of the door, listening to you talk to me. It's what I look forward to every day."

"But you never answered me..." The younger princess was rapidly losing control over her emotions, her voice beginning to shake even more. "I thought you hated me...and I didn't know why..."

"Oh, Anna, I could never hate you." Elsa took a brief second to weigh her words in her mind before she spoke, deciding if they were truth or not. "It tore me apart, locking myself away from you like that. Especially after Papa and Mama died...I needed you so badly...but I couldn't."

"Then why?" It was an innocent enough question, one that had all the weight in the world for Elsa.

"I..." She swallowed. "There's something I have to protect you from. Something about me that already hurt you...and that I can't let hurt you again. But now isn't the time to talk about it."

Anna's eyes betrayed her curiosity, but she thankfully let Elsa continue uninterrupted.

"I..." She took a shaky breath. "I love you too, Anna. That's why I locked myself away. I love you too much to hurt you."

"How could you love me, though?" Anna's gaze dropped again. "What I feel is...it's wrong. Ferociously unethical. How can you sit there and say that...that you still love me anyway?"

"Because I love you too," Elsa repeated, and a smile once again tugged at her lips before immediately vanishing. "Like, _love_-love."

Anna's double-take was nigh on comical, but neither of them laughed. For a moment, neither of them seemed able to break the silence between them - but it wasn't awkward or angry. No, it was anything but.

Neither of them realized that Elsa had slowly been leaning closer until they could feel their breaths on each others' lips.

"This is wrong," Anna whispered.

"Absolutely," Elsa agreed softly. "Immoral beyond measure."

"Mama and Papa would be horrified." Anna moved closer. "We shouldn't."

"We shouldn't."

When their lips finally met, though, there were no more halfhearted protests. There was nothing. Nothing except for Elsa and Anna, and the love that had saved both of them.

* * *

Yes, it was certainly the same routine every day.

Until the day when it wasn't.

* * *

*smacks self for slipping a Kim Possible reference in there* But it had to be done.

I swear I stayed up until two in the morning writing this because a) my brain wouldn't let me stop and b) djfeel was messaging me the entire time. The feels from writing this and listening to "Do You Want To Build A Snowman" on a constant loop nearly killed me.

But yeah, just a little oneshot that I had to write down (because I wasn't getting any inspiration in this fandom which really sucked because this is currently my favorite). So yeah, R&R, all that fun stuff, pretty please! :)

Now I must go take a midday nap because I am freaking exhausted.


End file.
